@@EnigmaticGentleman I am not a bot 🤖! My name is Miky, and I'm a real person! By the way, that's a Star Wars reference. Thank you so much for understanding 😊!
"Bruce Davis' biggest mistake was treating video games as commodities, rather than creative products." Luckily Activision has changed and never does this
Luckily literally every AAA developer never does this too, otherwise the video game industry would be stagnant, creatively bankrupt, and filled with microtransactions, leaving only indie devs to innovate and make good games
That's basically every corporation that starts from humble beginnings. Power corrupts absolute. RoosterTeeth, Crunchyroll, Funimation, Blizzard, Disney, Starbucks, Hasbro, Mattel, Apple, Dell, Amazon, McDonalds, Nike, Kinkos (Kinkos and Apple actually have oddly similar origin stories), etc etc etc. Even plenty of corporations that didn't start from humble beginnings used to be better than they are now like Sega, Microsoft and Konami.
@@psychokinrazalon All human beings are greedy, even under economic/social systems supposedly dedicated to selflessness, like Soviet Communism or various attempted communes here in the US (starting with the English Puritan Plymouth colony) that all eventually imploded on themselves (or in the Puritan's case, switched to a Private Property Free-Market model that formed the basis of the US economy). "“Well first of all, tell me: Is there some society you know that doesn’t run on greed? You think Russia doesn’t run on greed? You think China doesn’t run on greed? What is greed? Of course, none of us are greedy, it’s only the other fellow who’s greedy." ~Milton Friedman The issue in particular with these companies is the creative entrepreneurs that found them and responsible for the imaginative and creative products that make them successful get eventually replaced by bean counters, people who are very good at hard numbers and working with complex and detailed systems that follow consistent unbreakable unchanging rules, but aren't creatives in their own right. So they simply give the go-ahead to already proven concepts and products (how you get cookie-cutter copies following in the footsteps of new products). It takes a combination of vision, creative skills, and risk-taking to create a new company with a new product in an industry.
I find it interesting that David Crane wanted to make A Boy and His Blob like a multimedia franchise. Like imagine a world where the movie they wanted was actually made, it'd be crazy!
Meanwhile, in that alternate reality: "Hello, I'm the Nostalgia Critic, I remember it so you don't have to. REMEMBER A BOY AND HIS BLOB!? THAT HOT STINKIN' GARBAGE ON NES!? WELL, IT HAD A MOVIE FOR SOME REASON, SO I GUESS I'LL HAVE TO REVIEW IT! Ooooohhhhhh boy."
I miss working at Majesco. It was my first game dev job working on the internal Pipedream Interactive team. I never followed what the company was making outside what I was on. Much of 2001 most (or maybe all) of the Pipedream team was on two PS2 ports (Soldier of Fortune and Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force). Come the end of 2001, some of us were given XBox dev kits to play with. My friend moved over to working under Dan Kitchen, who I got to me but never working with (and now I wish I had). Unfortunately due to the company’s preparations to go public, some of us were laid off before our next project early 2002. My friends who remained on Pipedream told me not much happen for the next year so they eventually left. Majesco lives on but I think that was when Pipedream ended. It was nice to hear some of the goings-on that happened at the company afterward in this video.
It's good to have stories like this come out, so we can remember that not every cancelled game that never saw the light of day was a hidden gem. I think people are really prone to assuming that something they didn't get was exactly what they would've wanted, and sometimes... yeah, sometimes it's A Boy and his Blob on the DS.
I will never cease to be amazed with the amount of discoveries still being unearthed so many yesrs later; thank you and everybody else in the community for your tireless efforts in preserving video games and their history 🥰
@@psychokinrazalon Agreed. I think eventually it will be something you have to go to college for because finding all this stuff takes a very specific skillset.
(15:47) Ketchup isn't new. It's in the original NES game as well, and functions the same way, teleporting Blob to the spot where you throw it. (16:00) The NES game actually does have some enemies. There are the bouncing snakes in the underground that you can't defeat, and have no choice but to evade. And, on Blobolonia, you have things like marshmallows, popcorn, cherry bombs, and Hershey's Kisses, which you can shoot with the Vitablaster.
It bothered me immensely when he said the original game had no enemies after showing us all the enemies from the 20 minutes of archival footage they got from the original game
A Boy and his Blob was a flawed game that hasn't held up very well, but it was still remembered fondly by a number of people and it had a great idea that had so much potential. While there was a good reason as to why the DS game got cancelled, it's still good to see some uncovered lost concept footage, and I hope people will continue to find more in the future. Also, the WayForward reboot is great, and I'm glad it's being preserved since the original Wii release has essentially become a rare collectible nowadays.
I was not expecting a comprehensive biography of David Crane when I clicked this video, but it was a delightful surprise. What a legend. Pitfall II remains one of my all time favorite games.
Wayforward's A Boy and his Blob is a fantastic game, both incredibly charming and just brain-tickling enough. It's interesting to see this initial take on a redesign of the NES classic and see what could have been.
8:42 The vitamins used to defeat the evil king aren't found anywhere, they were already there however you do buy vitamins from a shop after the underground section which are used as ammo on the alien planet section.
8:40 you don't feed him vitamins from "across the map", you literally just spill a bottle found on the same screen. Vitamins only appear for your use at the store on Earth. Ketchup jellybeans are from the original game, you can feed one to him immediately after another flavor and Blob turns into a brick wall. Otherwise you throw one to respawn him anywhere.
Does anyone else feel like after the prophecy of L is real was fulfilled the floodgates have opened for gaming discoveries? It feels like you cant go a week now without a crazy new glitch, lost media finding, or developer bombshell.
@@cakemangaming3114 Actually not entirely it, the leak with Luigi occurred 24 years and 1 month after the release of Super Mario 64, so yeah it was like an actual prophecy.
I read in a magazine like twenty years ago they would go out drinking after work. After a few pitchers of beer they formed the dumb shits club because they were working for a 20k salary while atari was making millions
@@maccamachine bro I'm 30 fuck you mean! We are talking about a company that came into being 13 yrs before I was born. Idk what kind of life you've lived that you'd believe this was common knowledge.
I'm actually very glad we got the Boy and his Blob reboot that we got in 2009 on Wii instead. The graphics on this cancelled DS game do NOT look appealing, work-in-progress or not. The 3D models look like characters out of late 90s/early 2000s Windows search programs.
I can't remember if it was a website or gaming magazine, but I always saw A Boy and his Blob on an upcoming DS titles list. It's wild to finally understand why I never saw it released now.
gamepro used to list versions for the snes and n64 has well. So it seems an updated graphical version of the game was always on the table, at various points
I don’t think ketchup was a new flavor. In the nes manual, ketchup is listed with an asterisk. “There is one jellybean flavor that Blob detest: KETCHUP! In fact, if he accidentally ate one, he’d be petrified.” In the nes game if you try and feed him one, he doesn’t even open his mouth.
I have a NES cart, GB cart and Wii disc for all three Blob games... but I haven't really played them properly yet. I tried the NES one, got lost and stuck, and then didn't play any more since. ...I think I should maybe give the series another chance one of these days.
I actually played the Wii version. Super charming game, and there is a button that lets you hug the blob! This was an enlightening video, I never realized how much went into the originals development.
My favorite little bit of video game history trivia is that Activision got its name because it was alphabetically higher-placed than Atari was, so distributors and consumers would see listings by developers and see Activision first. Accolade followed suit, even higher up, and Absolute Entertainment was even higher than that. All jockeying for first place on the alphabetical listings.
Not only a great video & informative deep dive into gaming's history but the ending clearly shows fantastic story writing by the Did You Know Gaming team. Love it. Thanks for the 20:08 minutes.
I had no idea about A Boy and his Blob predating on the NES, and just assumed it only had one game on the Wii that was ported to Switch. I've been watching your guys channel for years, and it never ceases to amaze me because everything you guys talk about is so interesting. Keep up the amazing work guys
The best thing to come out of these prototypes is that, thanks to this video, I found out the Wii reboot was re-released on modern systems. I *HAVE* to revisit it, it's such a precious game.
I loved the Boy and his Blob game for the Wii. Great gameplay, gorgeous hand drawn animation, and wonderful music. Wayforward really nailed it out of the park with that game and I hope to see more like it in the future.
It's weird...I've been playing video games for over 15 years and I have never in my entire life heard of A Boy and His Blob. Not the original on NES, nor the new one on the Wii, or the port to the Switch. Kind of crazy. Now that I know about it, it sounds kinda cool
Fascinating stuff! Also, thank you so much for both releasing these roms and doing so through a group that's pushing game's preservation forward. Good on you guys! And extra big thanks to developer X!!
I thought long ago, Hardcore Gaming 101 mentioned something about a reboot about this game, back when it used a black background. Even had one screenshot, where the blob was green. Also, Ketchup jellybeans were in the original game, and served a similar purpose. They just couldn't be used when the Blob was on the same screen.
I hate to tell ya' this, but ketchup wasn't a new flavor. That was in the original NES game and it had the same function. Also you say there were no enemies in the NES game, that is also incorrect. There were these giant bouncing caterpillar/worm monsters in the caverns that you had to dodge or else they would kill you, and when you went to Blobert's planet there were various candy related enemies that could kill you if touched and you had to shoot them with your vitamin gun (or use the coconut glitch).
The NES version was incredibly difficult when I played it back in the day. It was fun, but I only once managed to leave the first half. Of course, I *was* quite young at the time, but still, I preferred something easier, like Battletoads.
Thanks for the fascinating video. Looking at the game it is obvious why it was never released, but it is always cool to get a look at these things. I wish companies would release stuff like this on their own without relying on Mr. X to leak them!
Sadly there's often too much red tape going on with a lot of these prototypes for corpos to simply release them. Contracts, licences, NDA's, wanting to "reuse" them at a later date, and even some skeletons in the closet, like segas "Golden Axed" release on steam.
I remember when the wii was first announced and they showed “concept” games they showed off one called what I believe was called “sadness” the trailer looked like it used realistic graphics and a woman holding wii and nunchuck. The whole trailer was in black and white… and I’m assuming the game was survival horror? Anyone know anything about it?
I think years ago I read in an interview the development of Sadness was a total disaster. In the first months the devs barely did any advance (a few 3D models) due to the lack of organization, I think. The game was silently cancelled after that.
i remember playing the a boy and his blob on the wii, was my first ever video game, and i LOVED it, until our wii eventually broke, and we since then lost the game... but my gawd u just unlocked a part of me i had forgotten COMPLETELY
I'm not keen on the sprites they used in the DS version for the boy and the blob, but gosh, the og one was a fun game! If they gave it a facelift it could easily come back
The green version of Blobert in the first build of the DS game reminded me of The Blob from ClayFighter, especially in his boxing glove form. If the game had ever been released, and he'd stayed green, I wonder if that would've ended in legal problems for them. They might've dodged a(nother) bullet by canceling the game.
I'm very happy that both prototypes of canceled DS version where found/dumped for preservation purposes. However from the looks of things, I think the devs made the right canceling this reboot. The one we got 3-4yrs later from way-forward on the Wii looks & plays so much better. Hell I still get out my copy and play it once a year on my Wii-u, along with the original game.
I played boy and his blob on the gameboy. I don't know if it was a direct port from the NES or not but it was fun though I was much more fond of mole mania than boy and his blob. The puzzles in mole mania could auto generate or even be altered by various types of inputs. I think that the auto generated levels were not truly auto generated but were really a set of optional levels that could be accessed under the correct circumstances.
Funnily enough, I was reading about this in Unseen64's book Video Games You Will Never Play... now we can play it. Back then I was helping playtest a DS game, a conversion of the classic arcade game Dragon's Lair. Not the version that was actually released, a version using compression techniques to give ALL the laserdisc original footage and gameplay. I even wrote an article on it for gamesTM magazine, but that version of the game was never published.
Hate to be “that guy” but ketchup flavored jellybeans were in the NES original used to bring the blob to the boy if they get separated, which is entirely possible, and it instantly teleports the blob to where the jellybean lands. It is possible to make the blob eat the ketchup jellybean and he gets a disgusted look on his face. Also the first build was released on May 16th 2005? What a mixed blessing of a birthday present…I’m eternally grateful of the Wayforward game that would come later to Wii, and even more grateful it got ported to Xbox One keeping it accessible and obtainable through backward compatibility.
A TON of planning and research went into this video. So if you like what you see, feel free to give this video a like and a share. Cheers 👍
First reply 🥇!
Second reply 🥈!
Third reply 🥉!
@@allaccessentertainment4755 My GOD These bots are getting worse and worse, RUclipss management is truly pathetic.
@@EnigmaticGentleman I am not a bot 🤖! My name is Miky, and I'm a real person! By the way, that's a Star Wars reference. Thank you so much for understanding 😊!
"Bruce Davis' biggest mistake was treating video games as commodities, rather than creative products."
Luckily Activision has changed and never does this
😏
Activision Blizzard on the other hand.....
@@lucinae8510 that’s the joke. They’re the same company b
Luckily literally every AAA developer never does this too, otherwise the video game industry would be stagnant, creatively bankrupt, and filled with microtransactions, leaving only indie devs to innovate and make good games
@@pmsherndon imagine if this happened
The irony of early Activision's mission statement & founding compared to what it is now is astounding
Ditto for EA
I just want Activision to make a new Dragster game with a Todd Rogers stand-in as the main villain. Is this too much to ask?
That's basically every corporation that starts from humble beginnings. Power corrupts absolute. RoosterTeeth, Crunchyroll, Funimation, Blizzard, Disney, Starbucks, Hasbro, Mattel, Apple, Dell, Amazon, McDonalds, Nike, Kinkos (Kinkos and Apple actually have oddly similar origin stories), etc etc etc. Even plenty of corporations that didn't start from humble beginnings used to be better than they are now like Sega, Microsoft and Konami.
@@mattwo7 Not power. Greed.
@@psychokinrazalon All human beings are greedy, even under economic/social systems supposedly dedicated to selflessness, like Soviet Communism or various attempted communes here in the US (starting with the English Puritan Plymouth colony) that all eventually imploded on themselves (or in the Puritan's case, switched to a Private Property Free-Market model that formed the basis of the US economy).
"“Well first of all, tell me: Is there some society you know that doesn’t run on greed? You think Russia doesn’t run on greed? You think China doesn’t run on greed? What is greed? Of course, none of us are greedy, it’s only the other fellow who’s greedy." ~Milton Friedman
The issue in particular with these companies is the creative entrepreneurs that found them and responsible for the imaginative and creative products that make them successful get eventually replaced by bean counters, people who are very good at hard numbers and working with complex and detailed systems that follow consistent unbreakable unchanging rules, but aren't creatives in their own right. So they simply give the go-ahead to already proven concepts and products (how you get cookie-cutter copies following in the footsteps of new products). It takes a combination of vision, creative skills, and risk-taking to create a new company with a new product in an industry.
It's nice to see that A Boy and His Blob at least had a happy ending with a successful Wii title after the DS game got canned
Which also got recently ported to current gen consoles
I'm playing it in my switch right now, and it's one of my favorite comfort games. Especially when you get to hug the blob
I find it interesting that David Crane wanted to make A Boy and His Blob like a multimedia franchise. Like imagine a world where the movie they wanted was actually made, it'd be crazy!
Meanwhile, in that alternate reality:
"Hello, I'm the Nostalgia Critic, I remember it so you don't have to.
REMEMBER A BOY AND HIS BLOB!?
THAT HOT STINKIN' GARBAGE ON NES!?
WELL, IT HAD A MOVIE FOR SOME REASON, SO I GUESS I'LL HAVE TO REVIEW IT!
Ooooohhhhhh boy."
@@etenby699 AVGN just released a video on it.
I miss working at Majesco. It was my first game dev job working on the internal Pipedream Interactive team. I never followed what the company was making outside what I was on. Much of 2001 most (or maybe all) of the Pipedream team was on two PS2 ports (Soldier of Fortune and Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force). Come the end of 2001, some of us were given XBox dev kits to play with. My friend moved over to working under Dan Kitchen, who I got to me but never working with (and now I wish I had). Unfortunately due to the company’s preparations to go public, some of us were laid off before our next project early 2002. My friends who remained on Pipedream told me not much happen for the next year so they eventually left. Majesco lives on but I think that was when Pipedream ended. It was nice to hear some of the goings-on that happened at the company afterward in this video.
"Majesco lives on but I think that was when Pipedream ended."
Man, that was such a poetic line.
It's good to have stories like this come out, so we can remember that not every cancelled game that never saw the light of day was a hidden gem. I think people are really prone to assuming that something they didn't get was exactly what they would've wanted, and sometimes... yeah, sometimes it's A Boy and his Blob on the DS.
Leave it to WayForward to revive this series. Love that studio!
I will never cease to be amazed with the amount of discoveries still being unearthed so many yesrs later; thank you and everybody else in the community for your tireless efforts in preserving video games and their history 🥰
Internet archeology will become a legitimate profession in the future.
Absolutely. It's fascinating to me
Nn
@@psychokinrazalon Agreed. I think eventually it will be something you have to go to college for because finding all this stuff takes a very specific skillset.
(15:47) Ketchup isn't new. It's in the original NES game as well, and functions the same way, teleporting Blob to the spot where you throw it.
(16:00) The NES game actually does have some enemies. There are the bouncing snakes in the underground that you can't defeat, and have no choice but to evade. And, on Blobolonia, you have things like marshmallows, popcorn, cherry bombs, and Hershey's Kisses, which you can shoot with the Vitablaster.
This stuff was bothering me, too. Gotta be careful with fact-checking when you are trying to educate people.
Came here to say this. DYKG do their best, but thank goodness for the comment section.
Right!!! U can tell when a narrator didn't actually play a game they're talking about lol
It bothered me immensely when he said the original game had no enemies after showing us all the enemies from the 20 minutes of archival footage they got from the original game
@@johnclark926 The footage also showed the ketchup beans in the NES game, I'm pretty sure.
You guys are killing it. Awesome video
Well darn
A Boy and his Blob was a flawed game that hasn't held up very well, but it was still remembered fondly by a number of people and it had a great idea that had so much potential. While there was a good reason as to why the DS game got cancelled, it's still good to see some uncovered lost concept footage, and I hope people will continue to find more in the future. Also, the WayForward reboot is great, and I'm glad it's being preserved since the original Wii release has essentially become a rare collectible nowadays.
"It is what it is, and we can only add more levels" That's a very bold statement considering barely anything was done and it was just one level
All the staff at DYKG is on another level! You all are doing great. Thank you for being miles ahead. Definitely my favorite channel for sure.
I think you mean they’re streets ahead.
I was not expecting a comprehensive biography of David Crane when I clicked this video, but it was a delightful surprise. What a legend. Pitfall II remains one of my all time favorite games.
Wayforward's A Boy and his Blob is a fantastic game, both incredibly charming and just brain-tickling enough. It's interesting to see this initial take on a redesign of the NES classic and see what could have been.
I am very satisfied with the new direction this channel has taken.
8:42 The vitamins used to defeat the evil king aren't found anywhere, they were already there however you do buy vitamins from a shop after the underground section which are used as ammo on the alien planet section.
8:40 you don't feed him vitamins from "across the map", you literally just spill a bottle found on the same screen. Vitamins only appear for your use at the store on Earth.
Ketchup jellybeans are from the original game, you can feed one to him immediately after another flavor and Blob turns into a brick wall. Otherwise you throw one to respawn him anywhere.
I remember Ketchup being a flavor in the original NES game. When you fed it to blobert, he'd frown instead of transforming because he didn't like it.
they literally show a screen of the ketchup bean in the original and then later say it's not in the original lol
17:44 “The seldom-seen enemies just stand there menacingly.”
I see what you did there 😉
Does anyone else feel like after the prophecy of L is real was fulfilled the floodgates have opened for gaming discoveries? It feels like you cant go a week now without a crazy new glitch, lost media finding, or developer bombshell.
You mean after the gigaleaks? I mean with literal TERABYTES of data there's bound to be new things discovered every other day
What prophecy?
@@tveye363 The fact that people thought Luigi was in Mario 64, and it was discovered years later that he was, due to the Nintendo Gigaleak.
The gigaleak was something else entirely.
@@cakemangaming3114 Actually not entirely it, the leak with Luigi occurred 24 years and 1 month after the release of Super Mario 64, so yeah it was like an actual prophecy.
Gaming History is so cool, I would have never guessed that this is how Activision started.
gay
Bro same i
I read in a magazine like twenty years ago they would go out drinking after work. After a few pitchers of beer they formed the dumb shits club because they were working for a 20k salary while atari was making millions
you must be a kid then if you just now finding out
@@maccamachine bro I'm 30 fuck you mean! We are talking about a company that came into being 13 yrs before I was born. Idk what kind of life you've lived that you'd believe this was common knowledge.
Y’all don’t stop digging. This is awesome.
I'm actually very glad we got the Boy and his Blob reboot that we got in 2009 on Wii instead. The graphics on this cancelled DS game do NOT look appealing, work-in-progress or not. The 3D models look like characters out of late 90s/early 2000s Windows search programs.
DS is early 2000s
@@HistoryandReviews No, the DS is mid-to-late 2000s.
@@jlev1028 wrong! DS came out in 2004.
Imagine if David Crane and his friends were paid well by Atari...
Todd Rogers would not have had an impossible World Record in Dragster.
I can't remember if it was a website or gaming magazine, but I always saw A Boy and his Blob on an upcoming DS titles list. It's wild to finally understand why I never saw it released now.
gamepro used to list versions for the snes and n64 has well. So it seems an updated graphical version of the game was always on the table, at various points
I don’t think ketchup was a new flavor. In the nes manual, ketchup is listed with an asterisk. “There is one jellybean flavor that Blob detest: KETCHUP! In fact, if he accidentally ate one, he’d be petrified.” In the nes game if you try and feed him one, he doesn’t even open his mouth.
Boy and his blob... I played this on the Gameboy back then and never finished this game because I dont even know what the hell I was doing
I have a NES cart, GB cart and Wii disc for all three Blob games... but I haven't really played them properly yet. I tried the NES one, got lost and stuck, and then didn't play any more since. ...I think I should maybe give the series another chance one of these days.
15:49 - Ketchup wasn't a new flavor. It was in the original NES game and had the same function (Made Blobert "Catch Up").
How could I never saw this pun before? Thanks so much for enlighten me with new knowledge
You do a lot of good work DYKG! Keep up the videos
The way how Activision was founded was *chef kiss*. It never astounds me. In the words of our favorite drunking robot "Now that is irony!"
Only NERDS say chef kiss
I actually played the Wii version. Super charming game, and there is a button that lets you hug the blob!
This was an enlightening video, I never realized how much went into the originals development.
My favorite little bit of video game history trivia is that Activision got its name because it was alphabetically higher-placed than Atari was, so distributors and consumers would see listings by developers and see Activision first. Accolade followed suit, even higher up, and Absolute Entertainment was even higher than that. All jockeying for first place on the alphabetical listings.
Nice congrats guys, thanks for the update
Not only a great video & informative deep dive into gaming's history but the ending clearly shows fantastic story writing by the Did You Know Gaming team.
Love it. Thanks for the 20:08 minutes.
I had no idea about A Boy and his Blob predating on the NES, and just assumed it only had one game on the Wii that was ported to Switch. I've been watching your guys channel for years, and it never ceases to amaze me because everything you guys talk about is so interesting. Keep up the amazing work guys
Same. I only knew about the Wii version. Definitely didn’t know about the sequel or planned DS game.
@@angel-of-light-kelly1355 this is why I love this channel. I learn so much about video games
The best thing to come out of these prototypes is that, thanks to this video, I found out the Wii reboot was re-released on modern systems. I *HAVE* to revisit it, it's such a precious game.
15:20 I see what y’all did there, you ain’t slick 😂!
Amazing work peeps.
The Ketchup jelly bean was in the original NES game as well with the same function.
I loved the Boy and his Blob game for the Wii. Great gameplay, gorgeous hand drawn animation, and wonderful music. Wayforward really nailed it out of the park with that game and I hope to see more like it in the future.
Man I was hoping it was the mean girls DS game, since that's been sought after DS lost media.
This was a great video! Now I wonder how many other games like this could have tech demos brought back just for historical purposes.
Amazing work guys. Keep killing it
Boy and his blob was one of my favorite nes game growing up as a young child..i could never get passed the first couple levels but I still loved it
What are you talking about Ketchup was in the original _Boy and his Blob._
15:48 The Ketchup flavoured ones existed in the old games, as well. They served the same purpose.
Very cool doc-like styled video for this release. Loved it.
"The latter being the final build Majesco ever received"
*gameplay of blobert transforming into a ladder*
genius
the Ketchup flavor bean was not new to that game. It was in the NES version, too.
I’m really loving the recent videos that you guys have been putting out. You can tell how much effort is put in them.
Super excited to check this game out!
Nice job!
The Idea of A Boy And His Blob being a multi-media franchise from the start reminds me of what was planned for Mighty No. 9.
So happy seeing this game series having a happy ending. Never heard of this series, but I now have a new appreciation for the series' history
It's weird...I've been playing video games for over 15 years and I have never in my entire life heard of A Boy and His Blob. Not the original on NES, nor the new one on the Wii, or the port to the Switch. Kind of crazy. Now that I know about it, it sounds kinda cool
There's a gameboy version they forgot to mention as well
Fascinating stuff! Also, thank you so much for both releasing these roms and doing so through a group that's pushing game's preservation forward. Good on you guys! And extra big thanks to developer X!!
13:44 if you just want to hear about the actual game in question, and not a complete recap of the series creation
4:11 Yikes. To think both Activision and Blizzard came from so much more humble roots. How the mighty have fallen.
Rescue of blob?! Never heard of that. Awesome.
Resident Evil 1.5, Pokémon Gold and Silver Spaceworld Demos, and now this? What a time for lost and unused gaming content.
I'm so glad Way Forward came along with their take on the games to make us forget about that dumpster fire.
I thought long ago, Hardcore Gaming 101 mentioned something about a reboot about this game, back when it used a black background. Even had one screenshot, where the blob was green.
Also, Ketchup jellybeans were in the original game, and served a similar purpose. They just couldn't be used when the Blob was on the same screen.
Actually, Ketchup works just fine even if Blob is already on the same screen. Blob will still warp to wherever the Ketchup jellybean lands.
I hate to tell ya' this, but ketchup wasn't a new flavor. That was in the original NES game and it had the same function. Also you say there were no enemies in the NES game, that is also incorrect. There were these giant bouncing caterpillar/worm monsters in the caverns that you had to dodge or else they would kill you, and when you went to Blobert's planet there were various candy related enemies that could kill you if touched and you had to shoot them with your vitamin gun (or use the coconut glitch).
The NES version looks so creative, fun and good and seems to have lots of personality. What a shame T-T
Don't worry too much, the WayForward game is good
The NES version was incredibly difficult when I played it back in the day. It was fun, but I only once managed to leave the first half. Of course, I *was* quite young at the time, but still, I preferred something easier, like Battletoads.
Thanks for the fascinating video. Looking at the game it is obvious why it was never released, but it is always cool to get a look at these things. I wish companies would release stuff like this on their own without relying on Mr. X to leak them!
Sadly there's often too much red tape going on with a lot of these prototypes for corpos to simply release them. Contracts, licences, NDA's, wanting to "reuse" them at a later date, and even some skeletons in the closet, like segas "Golden Axed" release on steam.
All games should be preserved, even the mediocre/bad ones. Good work!
The Wii title has such a charming art style, it reminds me of all the pleasant parts of flash games
oh my
5:28 So nostalgic for this footage from Activision Anthology
I remember when the wii was first announced and they showed “concept” games they showed off one called what I believe was called “sadness” the trailer looked like it used realistic graphics and a woman holding wii and nunchuck. The whole trailer was in black and white… and I’m assuming the game was survival horror? Anyone know anything about it?
I think years ago I read in an interview the development of Sadness was a total disaster. In the first months the devs barely did any advance (a few 3D models) due to the lack of organization, I think. The game was silently cancelled after that.
i remember playing the a boy and his blob on the wii, was my first ever video game, and i LOVED it, until our wii eventually broke, and we since then lost the game... but my gawd u just unlocked a part of me i had forgotten COMPLETELY
Obviously it wasn’t that good then
I'm not keen on the sprites they used in the DS version for the boy and the blob, but gosh, the og one was a fun game! If they gave it a facelift it could easily come back
15:22
Talk about a well timed pun!
“He’s just standing there, menacingly.”
15:50 Ketchup was in the original game too and had the same function.
I was going to say.
The green version of Blobert in the first build of the DS game reminded me of The Blob from ClayFighter, especially in his boxing glove form. If the game had ever been released, and he'd stayed green, I wonder if that would've ended in legal problems for them. They might've dodged a(nother) bullet by canceling the game.
Absolutely love the investigative series of videos that you've been doing more of lately!
I'm very happy that both prototypes of canceled DS version where found/dumped for preservation purposes. However from the looks of things, I think the devs made the right canceling this reboot.
The one we got 3-4yrs later from way-forward on the Wii looks & plays so much better. Hell I still get out my copy and play it once a year on my Wii-u, along with the original game.
This was easily the most rented game when I was growing up. So unique.
I'd love a DidYouKnowGaming video dedicated to Digimon. There is plenty of good trivia regarding the series
And yes Digimon was a game first
Pokeyman was a game first too nerd
Thank you for this amazing video! Please release more ROMs in the future!
I love how reluctant the studio was to make a reboot to this decade-old nes game until someone offered to do all of the hard work for them
7:40 I just realized Sealab 2021 has Gleep and Gloop in the episode Hail Squishface
That's awesome!
I played boy and his blob on the gameboy. I don't know if it was a direct port from the NES or not but it was fun though I was much more fond of mole mania than boy and his blob. The puzzles in mole mania could auto generate or even be altered by various types of inputs. I think that the auto generated levels were not truly auto generated but were really a set of optional levels that could be accessed under the correct circumstances.
Such facinating history of a game most would never even know was in production. Another awesome DYKG video! I can't wait to try out both roms 😁
I remember the Herculoids! 😆 Used to watch it when I was a kid. Had no idea it was that old!
Excellent work by all involved!
This makes me miss All You're History Are Belong to Us. Such a good series.
That art design! Woof! More like “A Rhapsody Street Kid and His Blob.”
Funnily enough, I was reading about this in Unseen64's book Video Games You Will Never Play... now we can play it.
Back then I was helping playtest a DS game, a conversion of the classic arcade game Dragon's Lair. Not the version that was actually released, a version using compression techniques to give ALL the laserdisc original footage and gameplay. I even wrote an article on it for gamesTM magazine, but that version of the game was never published.
This is crazy. You guys are finding new stuff non stop. How do you even do it?
Hate to be “that guy” but ketchup flavored jellybeans were in the NES original used to bring the blob to the boy if they get separated, which is entirely possible, and it instantly teleports the blob to where the jellybean lands. It is possible to make the blob eat the ketchup jellybean and he gets a disgusted look on his face.
Also the first build was released on May 16th 2005? What a mixed blessing of a birthday present…I’m eternally grateful of the Wayforward game that would come later to Wii, and even more grateful it got ported to Xbox One keeping it accessible and obtainable through backward compatibility.
I need an "A Boy and his Blob" metroidvania
@15:50 Ketchup isn't a new flavor. That was in the original because you could lose Blobert and they needed a way to bring him back to the player.
This is so fascinating
thx for bringing this story to everyone!
Love the meta commentary in the first few minutes. When is the next "did you know gaming facts and secrets part2"?